2 Weeks, 3 Smash-And-Grab Retail Thefts
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For the third time in the past few weeks, police are trying to find some brazen thieves who get into stores by smashing their way in.
As CBS 2's Susanna Song reports, the latest incident happened Tuesday morning at the Sears store at Six Corners – Milwaukee and Cicero avenues and Irving Park Road – in the Portage Park neighborhood. The thieves smashed the glass front door, which had to be boarded up.
Police say thieves threw a blunt object to break in around 3:15 a.m. Tuesday, and left shattered glass strewn everywhere.
On the way out, the burglars dropped a box of rings. But they still stole thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.
A Sears representative said he was not at liberty to disclose the value of the stolen items.
Last week, there was a similar break-in at the Best Buy store near Clybourn and Sheffield avenues and Willow Street, on the southwest edge of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The burglars drove a van inside of the store, located in the 1000 W. North Ave. shopping center, and made off with at least 18 iPads.
Last month, there was another smash-and-grab theft in the Best Buy at 2100 N. Elston Ave., in the big-box retail corridor adjacent to Bucktown. Thieves took dozens of iPads and Apple laptops worth tens of thousands of dollars. In that incident, burglars also rammed through the door with a van in order to get inside.
A customer at the Six Corners Sears on Tuesday said three smash-and-grabs in a month is a lot.
"It seems like there's a lot of that going on; I guess people are just getting more desperate with the economy the way it is, I guess," Sears customer Keith Gaddis said.
Gaddis added that he was "very surprised" that the break-in happened at the Sears where he shops, which carries a formal address of 4730 W. Irving Park Rd.
"Like I said, you know, this is a nice area," he said.
Police say no one was in custody as of 11 a.m. in the smash-and-grab at the Sears store. The Best Buy incidents also remain unsolved.
The Six Corners Sears does not appear to have any surveillance cameras.
